Boost Your Small Business Success with These Expert Tips | B2B Vault | Episode 160

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Johnny Bench of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And we'll be providing you educational information about fintech, small business Payment Processing and the Technology Businesses Are Using in the World Today. Yo, and, uh, in honor of Small Business Week, we wanted to do a podcast about, uh, small businesses, some helpful tips and whatnot. Shout out to all the small businesses. We love you. Without you, you know, you guys are the backbone of the world.

Yeah, backbone of the world, backbone of America. That's, that's a fact for a small business.

That is a fact. So, uh, thank you, Allen. Shout out to Allen for owning a small business. You know, without you, man, we'd all be SOL.

You know, this red hat in honor of Johnny Bench and the Big Red Machine.

There you go, there you go. It is baseball season. Go Brewers! Swagged out. Yeah, man, Brewers are doing good. Miami looks pretty good too.

Yeah, they— the Miami Marlins are are looking pretty healthy.

Tampa's smoking.

Tampa's always been—

had a good team past couple years. They've been really good. Yeah. Um, so what else is new, man? You look better. You look a billion times better, dude.

You're finally, finally feeling a lot, lot better.

COVID kicked Allen's ass.

Took a while to get— not just get over that, but just get over the exhaustion it leaves you afterwards.

Yeah, you're actually— you're actually not coughing 4,000 times, coughing like gazillion times a day. Your voice is almost back. Yeah, it's good, man. Good to have you back. I feel like I'm back a little bit too. I was, you know, I don't know. Anyway, you were missing me. Oh yeah. Oh, I missed you too, man.

Yeah, you know, wasn't fun like being at home. I didn't want to cough on everybody even though I was negative.

Oh, the month you were gone was definitely, uh, I mean, not like we didn't get stuff done here, but you know, it was the, the podcast breaks up that, um, the work day, the work day sometimes, you know what I mean? Gives you that little break, the little, you know.

Also, today is May the 4th be with you.

The podcast will be airing on the 5th. May the Sith be with you. Yes. So, but yes, it is also Star Wars Day, or—

yeah, Star Wars Day is the May the 4th. They get 2 days for Star Wars.

Yeah, May the Sith be with you. That's— to me, I don't know why it wouldn't have been on the 6th, but they needed something on the 5th. Whatever. Yeah, I like all the baseball games, like all the cool stuff that's going on in the baseball parks right now. Up in Milwaukee, they're giving away, uh, I forget what it is, but it was something super cool. I was like, man, someone's got to go. My aunt, my aunt's going to go to the game for sure.

But check out our social. Me and Justin got a good, uh, laser, you know, we got out the lasers, a little laser fight. So yeah, that'll be posted out on social.

What are they called? What did they call them? Scepter?

No, what do they call those?

Lightsaber.

Lightsaber. Yep, we had the lights, the lightsabers. We had the lightsabers out earlier and we had a little— yeah, we had a little lightsaber, uh, action going on. And we told some really bad, really bad jokes.

Some bad dad jokes. I didn't tell any of the jokes.

I told the jokes.

There was one that made me laugh. Uh, whatever. But, uh, yeah, man, is there any small businesses you want to shout out?

Small business? Well, you know, we always shout out— let's say we— today we worked with two sushi restaurants, help them with their processing. Everybody's— I mean, like, specifically, Senju Japanese Buffet, two locations, one in Davie and one in Miami.

Shout out to you guys.

And, uh, we'll give a shout out also another small business, Transfix, which is an art traveling art and like an art show. And it's at the, uh, their, their, the current show is at the, um, Resorts World in Las Vegas. So we work all over the United States.

Very cool.

Yeah, you know, we enjoy working with, um, you know, lots and lots of small businesses. They're everywhere. We're working with, um, working with today like a travel company, helping them, and then with the air conditioning company out of Texas.

Very cool, man.

You know, it's, uh, you know, it's, it's— we, we, we figure out like what challenges they have, and then we try to solve them as, as with tech, as you should.

Yep, finding that, uh, that bridge.

Yeah, exactly, finding that bridge, you know, because a lot of times, you know, businesses don't understand how technology can, can protect them against chargebacks.

I think there are a lot of business owners are afraid of technology.

Well, you You got to embrace technology today for the safety of your business and also makes your customers feel better too. So, you know, the days of taking the credit card over the phone and keying it in, the banks really don't like that on the, you know, the banks that are doing the credit card processing. They want you to send the person a text link.

Right.

And then get the customer to fill it in. So that's how that rolls.

What you got? What's— what tips you got here for these small businesses?

Small business, you know, marketing is on everybody's mind. Like, how do you do your marketing? How often do you change your marketing? How often do you post on social media? We had a whole meeting in the office.

We've literally had 2 days worth of social media— well, not social media meetings, but marketing.

Yeah, and we talk about, you know, you got to make constant changes in your business. I talk about the book Who Moved My Cheese? Things change, you have to change. So you have to think about, you know, how to market your business. Like recently, like recently we started going to some local trade shows, put on, you know, one was a multi-chamber show, other ones are—

what's a multi-chamber show?

Where there was like 5 chambers commerce. Everybody came from all over.

So it was a networking event?

A networking event. You have a table set up, talk to people, and, you know, let people know about your business. Hopefully you make some sales.

They're fun.

Get the word out, you know. Um, there's, you know, different things. We see people doing different marketing. Like, people during COVID were selling strictly on the internet. Now they want to get out and they want to set up like a pop-up store or a pop-up tent. Like, I see a lot of people with websites and they go to farmers markets or craft fairs and things like that.

Absolutely.

Or set up, you know, where churches set up like a thing and they let people, vendors, come and sell things, you know. Yeah. And that's another thing I see a lot of businesses doing is, you know, I love those market things, like those where a whole bunch of vendors come. Yeah.

Not just, you know, I don't, it's cool to have them sprinkled in at the networking events because I mean, you know, obviously everyone needs to make money, right? So, and also breaks up the monotony of the networking event. Like, it's almost, to me, it reminds me of speed dating. Like, sort of, you know, you hop from table to table and you get this little spiel from the person talking to you about their offer or business or whatever. But yeah, it's cool. I— but I love those, uh, what are they called? They call them like something—

oh, they call like— you'll see it like a farmer's market or a craft fair, right?

Sometimes some bizarre market, a bazaar.

Sometimes like shopping centers will do it and they'll have vendors come in as long as they don't sell things that compete with the stores in the shopping center. And it's a great way for e-commerce businesses to market their products. And get their product out there. And I see tons of them when I go to the farmers market near my house. Like, there's one in Parkland and one in, uh, Coral Springs. There's another one in Coconut—

oh yeah, the Yellow Green Market on the Saturday and Sunday.

It's packed.

I love that place, man.

Right. The one in Parkland, there's just tents, right? So there's a lot of people with websites. They show up, they're selling their pet treats, their CBD. They're crafts, clothing, crafts, all the plants, all different types of products that they sell mostly online, but now they're selling it in person. Then they get to people like, hey, now you want it again, buy it online. Yep.

So, or you get their contact information, you're able to send them their newsletter, or you're able to keep in touch at the bare minimum.

You're expanding the reach of your business.

Making that bridge.

Yeah, so marketing your business, building the bridge rather. No, it's changed from, you know, I've been in business and involved in business for 30-plus years. You know, you started out the newspaper, now you wouldn't— there is no newspaper, you know, for to really—

people still read the news, right?

But I'm just saying, like, advertising in the newspapers, it's way down, you know, like what it used to be. No, but So, you know, you got to really get with it on social media. And, you know, you can't just keep doing the same old, same old. You got to figure out like, hey, what works for your particular business type, you know, and figure out how often to post and figure out what to post. And, you know, a lot of people now, we discuss all the time about AI, right? So artificial intelligence.

And you should definitely be using AI within your marketing. I mean, see all the people out there that are like throwing those, you know, those videos around, you know, the scare tactics of, oh, AI is going to take my job, this and that, this and that. Well, I've been using art, you know, AI in, you know, my process for as long as I— I mean, for a long time now. You know, like, yeah, but we're using it a lot more. I mean, we use it a lot more, but the, the, the, I guess my point is, is like to embrace these tools that we have, you know, to make your process better. Um, you people been using calculators forever. Does that make it not correct?

Better than abacus.

I mean, that's my point. So like, instead of you, you know, I mean, it's not like the human still needs the idea. Right, right. Don't need the idea, and the human still needs to implement that, right? So there's that. And then, you know, like, I've been using it a lot for like, uh, like the, you know, like a planning type of thing, or if I don't want to create a spreadsheet myself, right? You know what I'm saying? Like, there's just so many different uses for it that you can really use it.

Yeah, you got to sit down, you know, go, you know, you go— I would say find a few YouTube videos to watch about ChatGPT, you know, and watch those.

Well, it doesn't have to be about ChatGPT, but, but that's one of the more popular ones, right?

But I'm just saying, and, and familiarize yourself with it. I mean, you can get on the ChatGPT for free, and don't be one of those parents like telling your kids not to use it, okay? Because Well, you can't copy and paste.

No, I'm saying— I'm not saying— I'm saying use—

have—

yo, you got to be teaching the kids how to use this stuff because they're going to get left behind, like literally. Because if you think for one second that AI is not going to be a part of our everyday life moving forward, you're mistaken.

Oh, definitely. Like, I was listening to these guys on business news the other day. Yeah, so, you know, I like to listen to business news when I'm in the the car. So they were talking about, oh, years ago they were talking about, oh, kiosks and robots and all this robotics gonna take away blue-collar jobs. Because now, like, you go to a car factory, there's a lot of robotics. They still need people there to make sure, you know, the door is stuck.

You need a human, right?

It needs a human. Not maybe as many as they needed before, right? And then the same thing, like, you go to the airport and there's a kiosk. Oh, weigh your bag, get the tag out. Put it on the thing, you know. And, you know, but you still need— there's still human help there, you know, for, for that. And, you know, now they're talking about like, oh, they were complaining about that, now they're saying, hey, some white-collar jobs could disappear from, from, um, AI. I don't know about that. They're talking about like, oh, you can't get legal help, you'll be able to get— use chat, you know, use an AI service and get legal advice. I mean, I don't know if I would use AI service to get legal advice. I mean, I did see a thing where there's a free— there's some kind of— yo, they can get legal advice.

The ChatGPT passed Google's coding exam that was like people struggle with, right? And I'm not talking about the basic one to get their entry-level position. I'm talking about the programmer Right, I saw that.

I saw where also it passed the bar exam.

That's what I'm saying. So the point I was trying to make was, right, like, you know, taking our jobs, no. But the people that you're— the people that you do have to worry about taking your jobs are going to be the prompt engineers, right? The people who are who are creating, who are going to be able to put the prompt in and 99% of the task is completed and they only have to fill that 1% void. Those are the people that we have to worry about. Like, what for? Like, I'm talking about me, like web designers, uh, graphic designers and shit like that.

We were watching the thing on social media video, right? It showed, oh, type this in, then you want to repurpose the same content and ask it to change it. Oh, then get it to change it again. So you could take the same post and repurpose it, you know, 5, 6 times.

Exactly.

So it's pretty cool. I mean, you got to figure out how, you know, what are the uses you can use it for and how to use it. I mean, because ultimately you have to figure out what to do with it. But I would definitely say, like, if you're not on the AI bus or the AI train You need to get on the AI train right away. It could probably help you do all sorts of stuff. Scheduling, uh, for—

well, I mean, staff, you type in a prompt, create me a 30-day social media calendar for my pizza place. Um, we have specials on Wednesdays from 3 to 5 PM, buy a pizza, get a free soda. It'll create you a content calendar for that, right? So that's free game, and that's all the game I'm gonna give you. But as far as, uh, the other question you said, how often do you change your marketing? I mean, that's a, that's a pivot thing, right? Like, we've been— you brought that up because, you know, we've been— we've tried some things, we did some testing, it didn't work, you know what I mean? The, the way we went, it's not working the way we wanted to, so we got to pivot. And we got to find a different approach. And, you know, we take it from there. That's the— that's— as far as changing the marketing, if it's worked, I'm, I'm a fan of it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? If you're not getting the results you want, you got to figure it out, tweak it, make some changes.

You know, you're posting, you know, like pictures and that's not working, start posting some video. Posted video, that's not working, post pictures.

Graphic, whatever, graphical elements, whatever it is, you know, you know, definitely change it up.

Embrace the AI.

Embrace the AI. Let it help your marketing efforts. Um, don't be afraid of it, but also you have to edit it. You can't just take it and let it spit out what you get and then post it. Like, don't do that.

Let's go to number 2. How do you use technology in your business? First thing I wrote was, are you doing anything with AI? You know, do you just have a credit card machine, and is it time to, you know, get a point of sale system so you can track everything that you sell? Some people want to do that, some people don't want to do that, but the technology is there, and the prices for point of sale system has come way, way down because point of sale When I first started doing this 22 years ago, even credit card machines are different. Credit card machines today are Android devices, so they can do more, hold more information, do a lot more than what they were doing before. And point of sale used to be on PCs. It was very expensive. And then the next move, they were putting them on iPads, right? And that was— I'm not a big fan of point of sale on the iPad because a lot can go wrong. And what goes wrong with the iPad situation is two things happen. One, Apple updates the iOS and you don't check compatibility that your— that your point of sale company wants you to upgrade the iOS and you have it set to auto update. You gotta turn that off. If you have iOS and you're using point of sale. So you have to be very careful.

Not good.

Because we've had some nightmares where people updated their iOS, then the point of sale stopped working, then you got to dial it back. It's not exactly easy to do.

It doesn't sound—

today, most of the point of sale that's coming out, it's all built on Android, and that's making it really good because those systems are hybrid. So hybrid means that you have the info on the device and in the cloud. So it's not dependent on just the cloud.

And it's 5G, it's 5G, you said?

Yeah, you can do 5G, Wi-Fi, hardwire. So, but it makes it a lot— the connectability is more reliable and it's more stable because, right, it's, it's on the device, right? Not an app, right?

You know, which makes sense for me, right?

So it's on the device making it a lot more stable. So point of sale prices coming down.

What would be a good, uh, you said in the beginning, you know, like point of sale system, not for everybody. What, but what's a good, you know, like breaking point of say, hey, you know, I'm doing it this way, you know, I just have a regular, you know, credit card machine. I think I'm, you know, I'm ready.

You want to grow your business, you definitely got to have a point of sale because one once you start adding in employees, you want to start tracking your inventory. You want to have good records. And, you know, then you say to yourself, oh, I want to open a second store. Well, you know, you gotta, you gotta have, you know, you gotta start using a point of sale system. You got to go from a credit card machine to a point of sale, you know, because that way you're tracking your inventory. You want to take inventory from Store A, put it at Store B. You take it off the inventory in Store A, add it to the inventory in Store B.

So to answer my question, so like if you're expanding, that'd be a good time.

You want to grow, you're growing your business, it's not just—

no, I mean, so like what would that be? Like say, what if I'm doing, so I'm doing, I don't know, I'm doing $25,000 a month.

Yeah, but if you have inventory and it's not just you in the business, right, you need a point of sale.

So I'm saying, I'm asking like I'm doing $25 grand, it's time for a point of sale. Why?

Because so you can track your inventory. You know what you brought in, what you sold, then you can figure out your loss if anything was shoplifted, right? Stolen out of your store, employee theft. There's all kinds of things. We were showing a guy yesterday Bar Software, right? And they have an old point of sale, and we said— we showed them some of the features that are specific to Bar. Okay, right. So one of the features was when the bartender puts in a drink, right, there's a timer. So the timer, it goes for, let's say, 90 seconds. Okay, so after 90 seconds, an asterisk appears and that drink is locked in. So now the bartender can't delete it later, can't take that drink off the ticket without getting a manager.

So like, if the— you mean, so like the bartender was trying to give away a drink Right, so, but also record it, right? So no, no, why would a bartender do that?

No, so let's say because he's going to keep the money. No, but let's say I'm trying to figure out the reason. I'm going to tell you. Let's say I'm your bartender. Yeah, you're sitting at the bar, you order a round, 3 vodkas, then you order another round, 3 vodkas, and you order another round, 3 vodkas. We're schmoozing it up. I know I'm gonna get a big tip. You can't go over on this point of sale. You can't— the bartender can't go back and delete a couple of drinks to give me a deal so I could get a better tip.

Uh, so like, oh, so like, hey, I bought you these drinks, right?

Yeah, I threw you two— I took two drinks off, bro, hit me, you know. And you're gonna give the guy a hookup so that, you know, it's kind of sucks.

I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't go to the bars like that.

That's that from happening. Also, it displays the price, like when the when they're ringing it up big. So a lot of bars or restaurants, they'll put cameras above the point of sale, but by doing that, they can see the amount of the tickets all the time on camera, which is— can be helpful in some places. If you have a really busy bar, it's, it's really good. It tracks all your drinks. The other thing it does is, is it tracks your liquor sales in a way where if you serve a ton of mixed drinks You can lower your amount of liquor sales, which will lower your liquor tax— they're not your, not your tax, your liquor liability insurance. So let's just say you have a million dollars in liquor sales for the year, right? But you serve a lot of margaritas and a lot of mixed drinks and stuff like that, so you could take 20-30% on those drinks and credit it towards food. Now you show your insurance company only $700,000 in liquor sales, and then your insurance can go down in most cases— liquor liability insurance. So point of sale can do a lot of different things when it comes to that.

Now that was a little jewel.

And also like text and email receipts coming out of your credit card machine, out of your point of sale.

You know, we just have credit card machines take, uh, like, um, yeah, little thermal rolls. No, I'm saying like customer information. You can't store customer information inside of a credit card machine, can you?

No, you can't store— you can't have a—

no, like, so that— yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Like, that's the other thing. If you have a point of sale system, you have a loyalty program. One of the things, like, I had a lady owns like 3 smoke shops. They never had point of sale. I showed her a point of sale for a very affordable price. When you do the dual pricing, it's around $200. Okay, she was like, that's it, $200? Yeah. And then the monthly is like $39 with the loyalty program.

So for 3 machines, $40, it's $120 a month, right?

So that— yeah, so they paid— so she tried it in one, two.

So, okay, so $200 she bought it, or does she— no, bought it for $200, a point-of-sale machine, the whole thing. Like, that blew my mind when I, when I seen the, the, the price of it, the thing. I was like, what, man? Cuz I remember those things being like $5,000.

Yeah, they used to be 5 to 7 grand.

It's the same for, like, for everybody in— to put it in a bit of perspective, it's the same way of cost as like big screen televisions went from like crazy $5,000 to where you can get an 80-inch TV for $400. Like, literally, that's like the best way I could put it.

Yeah, so you can get a whole point of sale for one— for $199. That company is very specific to convenience stores, liquor stores, and smoke shops, small retail. They have a very specific niche. And then you do the dual pricing where you pass a small fee to the customer, but it has a loyalty program, it has other stuff in it too, like it has tobacco reporting. Does all kind of like tax reporting. A lot of the point of sale does that. So maybe you live in a place where you have a lot of taxes, right? The, the new point of sales, they can track multiple taxes. So you might have a city to— like, I'll give you an example. Like, the people in Las Vegas, we asked them how they wanted to track the tax. Did they want one tax line or two? They just wanted one. So we added up the tax because they had a state tax and a city tax. Yeah, but you could have a place like in Miami. We have a customer, they have sales tax, a 1% homeless tax.

They have a—

the area they're in has a really small tax, like point—

a county tax.

Yeah. And then they have some kind of— then they have some tax because they're on the beach and they're in a hotel and they have to pay a hotel tax.

What you're saying, that sounds like Wisconsin. So, but minus the beach.

So instead of piling it all into one line item, it's all separate line items. And then also it's tracked like that, so at the end of the month they can report it back out like that because it all doesn't go to the same place.

Makes sense.

So, you know, those things can happen. And also a lot of people are into this text email receipt thing, not printing out paper, save paper, you know, go green.

Say, oh yeah, I mean, I know, I know a couple people that won't even go to your— they won't support you if you're not like—

I mean, I go to Publix. The worst store that I, I don't like going to, but if I have to go there, I go there. CVS, I don't like going there. The checkout's a nightmare, right? You have to wait forever because I feel like they do all of that on purpose because, because they want you to buy candy or whatever they got in front of you.

Yep.

Magazines. And knickknacks, tchotchkes, and you know, they want you to pick something up at the counter, but the problem is, is you know, a lot of it is the point of sale looks old, right, and it's slow, and usually they probably have a high turnover of employees.

You know whose point of sale systems are old? No, no. Family Dollar.

No. Oh my God. You get the receipt, and the receipt receipts like 6 feet long with 5 gazillion—

the Lord of the Rings books.

I mean, it's crazy. The receipt at CVS is nuts.

The one— there's so many, there's so many viral videos about the receipt. Like the one guy, there's like a challenge who can get the longest.

Yeah, you go in there, you buy a bunch of like, uh, beauty products, okay, you're gonna get a boatload of receipts out of that.

Oh, you can get some discounts, that's for sure. Yeah, but on your next visit.

Yeah, who knows. All right, let's go on to the next subject.

Financial budgeting for small business. Are you doing it or no? Uh, if you're not budgeting your small business, you are setting yourself up for failure.

Yeah, you really need to get— like, I, I've had— we had a meeting with a group and I was like, do you guys use QuickBooks? They looked at me like I was insane. I'm like, how are you doing $300 grand a month in business, right? And I had another guy also that week.

Yo, their explanation of why they weren't— I was just, I was like a little fly on the wall that day. Yeah, I didn't want to, right? You were just listening to learn and observe more, more, more to observe, observation and learn. And when I was listening to these kids, because that's what they are. They're doing 500 grand a month, but they're kids.

Yes, they're kids.

They're adults. But when something goes wrong for those kids, and I'm, and I'm not wishing it on them, I hope—

see anybody—

I, I don't want anything wrong to happen to their business, right? But if one little thing, yeah, is going to create such a domino effect in that business, yes. Like, they're gonna wake up doing whatever it was the next day, they're not gonna be very happy.

Yeah, you gotta have— you gotta have—

they need to have some back doors in place. They, they have the fact that they have one fulfillment center.

No, they had two.

I don't care, that's not enough.

Two isn't enough?

I don't think so.

I don't know what's the relationship, because they moved from out of China I like what they did. They moved to the Philippines and Vietnam.

It's smart. That's a very good business. Yes, we have a good— America has a great relationship. No, but I'm just saying, not China, because China, they'll stop from shipping to us.

Go wrong.

Yeah.

And then you're done.

Exactly. So that's not good.

They did a smart move. They had a problem with China and they switched to— but the one thing is, when I said to them, like, you know, you guys want to grow You're gonna have to produce a financial statement for the bank. Yeah, no bank wants to do business with you.

Hey, I almost started cracking up when they— when, when you said to him, like, I looked at the bank account, man, it was only $50 in there.

I go, what do you guys do with all the money? They were like, oh, we sweep the account. And I go, well, where does it go? They didn't want to tell me. And I was like, you know, if you want to do half a million dollars worth of business, the bank wants to see that you have a healthy business account, that there's money in the bank, and also they're going to say, oh, you're doing half a million a month of e-commerce sales.

Where's the reserve?

We want to see— no, no, no, that reserve, that's a merchant account. They had like a 10% rolling reserve on. But the other thing is, is they don't have—

would that even cover it though?

That wouldn't cover like if they had a total loss. No. Wouldn't cover it. That's what I— but the problem is, is I said, you know, the bank wants to see a P&L. They want to see a profit and loss statement, a balance sheet. They want to see what's going on with your business. You know, you, you got to take care of that.

Your word of mouth isn't going to go far, buddy.

Yeah, you're not going to be able— that's why they only had a bunch of little merchant accounts, right, and not one big merchant account. If you want to have one, if you want to have a good merchant account and you want to do half a million a month and stop paying 5, 6% for credit card processing.

You're gonna have to get your paperwork right.

7%, that's what they were doing. They're paying like 5, 6, 7%. I mean, that's crazy. Plus a reserve, 10%. So you're talking about 16, 17% just out the door of your money. I mean, that's a lot. And they didn't have a, you know, wasn't a high— it was like a 40% profit.

Yeah, no, their profit wasn't— is not high.

No, it's like a 40% profit. Right, but minus the 17%.

But the amount of the profit—

no, that's a good amount of profit. I mean, if you're doing $500 grand, you're making 40% on your money. But the problem is you got 17% of it, 10% the bank has, and the other 7% is going for credit card processing. That's a problem.

That's what I'm saying.

You're doing half a million a month, I can get you a merchant account under 4%, get you 3.5%. That's half. Save 3.5%.

I mean, everything you were saying, that's what I'm saying. Like, everything that you were saying in that meeting, I was just—

I mean, that's $15,000 a month in fees. On top of that, you probably could get your reserve lowered to 5% if you showed them $250,000 in the bank.

Their whole business model is a podcast episode, so let's move forward.

Okay, you gotta have records. When you want to expand your business, like let's say Justin has Justin's T-Shirt Shop. Now Justin wants to open up T-Shirt Shop Number 2, needs some money from the bank, whether he's taking a home equity loan, whatever. Justin, show us your books for your business. Oh, we want to see your P&L, your balance sheet. You got to produce that. So you need to be using, you know, there's—

and your PayPal, that PayPal thing, that, that usually, I mean, it can go a little bit far, but it Like, trust me, man, it didn't work. They almost got laughed out the bank for showing them that piece of paper.

To have point of sale, that's why you need to have QuickBooks. You know, there's QuickBooks, Xero, FreshBooks, there's a bunch of options when it comes to Zoho Books. All of them can be integrated into a regular merchant account, so you don't have to use the high-priced, uh, stuff that they offer. And then you can have good business records so that you can expand your business. You know, do you have a payroll provider? Make sure you use a payroll company and you run payroll, because you know how many people didn't run payroll and then we got— went into this pandemic, which I hope we never see again, and then they couldn't get any PPP money because they didn't have payroll records because they were paying their employees cash.

Yeah, I, I dealt with a few people they were trying to— I, I wish I could have helped them, like, during a, you know, couple business people that I built websites for.

I know someone who got in trouble. They—

and they never paid themselves. They never paid their— well, they paid themselves and they paid their employees, but they didn't do it properly, right?

Exactly.

And so because they didn't do that, they couldn't get money. They couldn't get nothing, man. And I mean, they got small pieces, but nothing that was available out there.

Yeah, I mean, I know people that if they were doing it right, they could have got like a couple hundred grand, saved their business, and, and, and really put— set their— and, and they could have really got some money. And, and, and they were lucky that they were in Florida and they weren't on lockdown that long. They were lucky because if they were in some place like California, forget it, you're out of business, right? We had a guy over there with like 5 sushi places.

You were literally just talking about him today.

Out of business.

I mean, how many of those— oh, I've— yeah, because during it, during that time, I mean, so many calls like, Justin, can you help me? Can you do this? Hey, what about this? And I'm like, bro, yeah.

Also, you know, have a bookkeeper so you, you know, that you pay a small— you know, your CPA can probably refer you somebody, you know, that can do— look at your QuickBooks every month.

I don't mean to interrupt you, but this is a perfect A client of mine, yeah, did not hand in his annual report for Florida.

Oh, for the corporation? You got to do that in January.

I look—

I—

he called me on the phone, he's at the bank.

Yeah.

And he's trying to get his money, right? Well, they're like, you don't have— this is not valid, you don't have an LLC anymore. Well, you know what, okay, because they put that, you know, they put a big like freeze on your account.

You want to know what you have to do?

They pay that $400.

No, you can actually like call them on the phone.

I know, that's what I have.

You a one-time exemption.

That, that's what they did. They'll give you a one-time exemption to get that back if it's your first time missing.

Because what happened was that happened to, that happened to us one time because they never sent us a notice, right?

This is exactly what Mike, the guy, was telling me through the mail.

Now they just sent it in the email. But back in the day, you know, we've been in business 22 years. So I remember one of like 3 or 4 years into business, we never got the letter, so we didn't pay. And then we got a letter saying, oh, you owe $500. I was like, why? We have—

well, you have to do this annual report in every state that—

every state. Yeah. Yeah. You got to do it.

Not just Florida.

Do it. You got to— you got to make sure you do it.

And then what happened to them? So what happened to you?

Oh, so we— I ended up calling up on the phone complaining, saying, hey, we never got a letter. We didn't. Get a notice. They were like, okay, there's a one-time— if you pay it right now online, one time. They sent me a link, boom, I paid and it was done.

Should I call him and see if he did it?

Not right now.

Be interesting if we never called anybody on there.

We have called— called my friend K one time.

I'm gonna call him. I'm gonna call him on the, on the, on the FaceTime, see if he answers.

Okay, but financial budgeting is important. Talk— make sure you have an accountant. You know, if you're using like H&R Block, that's okay too, but I would make sure you have a bookkeeper. The bookkeeper can help you set up QuickBooks, reconcile, you know, every month or every quarter. Usually they get paid a couple hundred bucks to do that. It's money well spent.

Yeah, well, he didn't answer. The other thing is probably working.

The other thing is banking. And we've talked about banking before, and one of the greatest secrets to banking is, you know, what do you need from your bank and can they help you? And what kind of business do you have? Don't name— like, if you're going to sell CBD, don't name your business Allen and Rocky and Justin CBD Palace. Don't incorporate it. Don't make that name. Just call it AJR Inc. So when you go into the bank and they say, what do you sell? Health products. So they don't care.

Listen to this guy, he knows what he's talking about.

So they don't care.

Because I didn't understand, I didn't really think of the logic. Well, it didn't make sense to me, but then as I'm sitting here listening to him talk one day, business, and I'm like, all right, so I could think of the most vulgar thing possible, right? And you know Smash Bros is a good example of that, right? You know, you wouldn't want to add, you know, something else into it to make it more raunchy, right? And then go into your bank and be like, this is what— no, you're a gentleman's club, that's it. And this is the—

you don't even want to tell me, right?

Bar, that's it, right? That— see, there you go. I, I gave up too much information.

Yeah.

And that's— this is one of those things my dad would always teach me about, like, how You know, you don't have, you don't have to divulge so much information. You can give exactly enough information to answer the question. So you're a bar, that's it.

What's your business? Okay, they just don't want to know all your business, and they don't because they're looking at it from the standpoint of their shareholders are looking through the roster of businesses and they go, Allen and Rocky CBD Emporium?

No.

We don't want that at the bank on, on their roster of—

they don't want their portfolio.

Yeah, they don't want to see that. They, they go look at it.

Now, if it was like Justin's Ammo, Ammo and Ammo Bar, they might not—

they might not be friendly. Listen, I know people— I got kicked out, we got kicked out of a bank because they, they went to our website and they said, oh, you guys, uh, board gun merchants, right? Right? I'm like, it's a legal business. The bank's like, well, we don't want you banking with us because the people— somebody had bought the bank, was a local bank, and the people who bought it were big Bible thumpers. I don't have anything against them, but why should they judge who are our customers?

Yeah, I don't know. That's not—

but they did. They said, oh, you do business with— and also they found out like some customer, some big company that paid us money, and so we don't want we don't like that company for whatever reason.

That's crazy, man.

It was pretty crazy. But you have to make sure the bank— bank doesn't care what you do. Like, if you need— if you have a convenience store and you need to get change, right, do you do enough business where you want Brinks coming to your store once a week, every other week, once a month? Do you have a safe in there? Do you want to deal with all that? Um, Can you go to the bank with and get change from them and deposit cash? Because, you know, if you have a convenience store and you're in a, you know, disadvantaged neighborhood, you're going to deal with a lot of cash. So you got to make sure the bank can handle your kind of business. You have an ATM in your business, open up a separate bank account, fund it so they see 20s, you're picking up 20s, they see deposits, and the numbers are close enough, man, that the banks Allen has a lot of tips.

Yeah. And so like, you got to relax. So what's up next? We got legal and regulatory compliance.

Yeah. This is one of the things.

This is my least favorite thing to deal with in big bold letters and notes.

Yeah. I don't really, I mean, I don't think I'm for less government. Like people would say, oh, are you a Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian? I mean, whatever. I was independent my whole life. Some of my— I guess some of my leanings would be towards being a libertarian, meaning like less government, you know. I think when we have less regulation of crazy regular— I mean, look at what they're doing to crypto right now. Crypto— Biden destroyed crypto. They put a rule in with taxes, right? Everybody, all the investors pulled their money out of crypto. Sent crypto from $70 grand down to wherever it is now, in the $20s, $30s, around $30 grand, right? In Europe, crypto is going strong. Over—

and in Asia, that's because they regulated it out there though, right?

But I'm just saying, it's, it's, it's— they don't have the—

America's just behind on it, man.

No, we don't have the tax stuff, right? Justin asked me today, he's like, oh, the digital dollar coin, it's backed by the US government. I go, no, it's not. And it's not. It's only— it's regulated, it's priced against the US dollar.

It's priced against the US dollar.

It's not guaranteed by the government.

I was on, uh, whatever. Yes, you're right.

No, but he stuck a tax on crypto transactions, making it impossible for people to do business doing crypto transactions unless you're doing some offshore stuff, which I'm not, which everyone is doing. Yeah, well, I'm not participating.

Did you see Coinbase is about to move there?

Well, Coinbase— well, Binance moved out of the US.

That's exactly what Coinbase is about to do.

Coinbase is suing the SEC, they're suing the government, the government's suing them.

And it's a smart thing for Coinbase to do though, because—

yeah, yeah, they're gonna have to move out of the US. I mean, I don't know who's gonna be next, but there's probably other companies that do Bitcoin. There's been Bitcoin 18 ATM companies that got— one got breached. There's a whole bunch.

I mean, those, those ATMs, I could—

I mean, I'm not getting involved in that business.

I didn't, I didn't— I had an opportunity to get involved with that a long time ago.

I think it was a long, a long-term moneymaker.

It just seems sketchy to me, you know?

Like, I don't like it when they make laws that affect your business, you know? Like, you have to have— if you have 3, you know, like, we were trying to do business with a, a, uh, a government entity, right? They sent over like a 10— like they sent over like a 2-page thing. They wanted, uh, they wanted us to add them to our liability insurance. We're not doing that.

What?

Yeah, which— because we're not doing anything in your bit— in their business, right?

Why would you be liable?

We— and you know what, you used to be able to add people to your liability insurance and not get charged. Because we have to put like our landlord on there, you know, and they used to not charge you for that. Now if you add anybody to your policy, a lot of these insurance companies want $100, $200, $300 for each person you add on. It's a great policy. So I said, no, we're not doing that. Then they said, oh, you need to have this e-verify thing. I said, we're not doing that either because that's a whole pain in the the butt. Then I went and looked online for the state of Florida rules about what that's for. So I said, we're not involved in that, in the contracting business. Does that have a rule in Florida? Oh, if you, if you're a contractor, which we're not a contractor, you have to use e-Verify in your business to make sure you have only—

oh yeah, I was, I was a part of that. I had to do that because I wanted to make, uh Bids for government contracts for web design.

I want you to have E-Verify for all your employees. So I said we have each employee fill out—

it's easy for single, for like solopreneurs.

So E-Verify, like, it's a whole process to go through it. I mean, I might go and do it, but— and then enroll all the employees. I mean, we have, we have a pretty stable thing, plus we have an I-9. We use an We use a payroll company. The payroll company verifies that the social and the ID is the right person before they even start to work. So we're, you know, I guess they might be using E-Verify, but we're not using it like as a company.

Yeah, why would you need to use that?

We don't need to use it because—

but the other thing, because you're not— we're— yeah, never mind.

The other thing was this: I showed them on the state of Florida website that it was not— that we were exempt from that. Right? Then they wanted to know, they wanted us to name them in our workers' comp policy. I told them, no, we're not doing that.

Why would you want that?

They wanted it. I said, they said, oh, because we're going to come there and deliver something to them. What if the person fell down in their building?

If we came to deliver something to them?

Yeah. And then so it fell down in the building. So I said, no, we're not.

How would we be under?

Why would I don't know, they wanted to be named.

Yo, the government is nuts.

Then they said, they said, oh, you can't have exemptions. I said, oh, no way, I'm not adding myself and my business partner to the workers' comp policy because it'll be like triple, right? Because you got to add in your salary. Oh yeah, yeah, you can't have exemptions. I was like, no, we're not. I told them we're not doing it. You want to do business with us, great, you you don't want to do business with us, that's fine too.

Where was this?

I don't want to name who it was, but I'm not— you know, you can't— I can't go every time someone wants us to do business with them. Oh, we need you to add us to your policy. We're not doing it anymore. We did it with one place, and then I told them that we would have to add it to the bill. The guy said, okay, add it to the bill, because the insurance company wanted $150. It's not free anymore.

Oh, that's crazy.

And it's something that they got from the state of Florida. Now, if I would have known that when I did the first one, the guy paid for it, so I didn't go research it. But when these people asked for it, this entity, I said, I said no. I said I went to the state of Florida rules, right? And the state of Florida rules says if a government entity like a city, blah, blah, blah, hires a contractor— we're not a contractor. Contractors, like, you know, electrical contractor, web developer contract. No, that's— web developer's not a contract.

Why not? I'm a contractor.

No, they're talking about like con— yeah, like a— yeah, like, yeah, web developer might be a contractor, and they would need to get— they would have to get insurance. They would have to be named in their insurance or whatever. But, you know, you're trying to— if you're a, a city and you're trying to do business with local businesses, you're putting way too much pressure on the local business to go do all this stuff. It's going to cost them a couple of thousand bucks to go do that. And especially the non— no, no exemption on the workers' comp. Yeah, that's crazy. What if you got 3, 4 owners of a business and they're all exempt? Now you want to add in all their salaries, right? That could, you know, that could cost thousands of dollars on the insurance. So, you know, that's just a little bit crazy. And then the last thing, this is something like I'm not big on, like, you know, cult, you know, whatever, company culture. You know, is company culture important? I think every company, you know, needs to have, you know, needs to know, like, what kind of boss are you going to be when you own a business. Right. How are you going to treat your employees? Okay. I think it's very important, you know, that you, you have a, you have a, your head in the right place when you're employing people. Now, I've been, you know, I came from the hotel industry. So in some cases, like, let's say I remember my first job when I was the head chef, I was in charge of a kitchen. I had like 8 employees. Then that place got busier. I had 10 employees, so I was responsible for 10 people, right? I would hire, fire, discipline them, write them up, make sure they follow the rules and all that. Then, you know, when you have a business and you own a business, you got to be able to, you know, you got to do things the same way. You know, you have to ask your workers, say, oh, please, thank you, you know, be grateful that you have them. You know, you have to be able to effectively interview people. Sometimes you have to take chances. But I learned that from one of my first, like, jobs when I was in charge of a whole kitchen and I had like 70 employees. You know, my boss, he's the guy who was the food and beverage director, told me, he goes, oh, you have a guy come through the door, he's a good candidate. Maybe you don't have a spot for him in the kitchen right now, but you know you need this guy, right? And he could fill in the spot that's maybe weak. And at that point, I was having— I was about to kill myself because I had like 2 guys that were supposed to show up for breakfast. And, you know, so they did. One guy did 3 days a week, the other guy did 4 days a week, and one of them was showing up late every day. You can't have that in a business hotel where it's a business this hotel, right? Because what happens is everybody wakes up in the morning and they want breakfast, right? And the restaurant's packed and everybody's going to the breakfast buffet. So I was like, my bosses— my boss goes, well, this guy's a little bit more expensive than we want to spend. Let's get this guy, hire him. It's the right hire, right guy, right? We'll put that guy in another spot, the guy that's not doing a good job, because I was getting tired of getting woken up by front desk, hey, the restaurant's supposed to be open, no one's in the kitchen, right, right, right.

And then you jump out of bed, drive to the hotel, you know, deal with that.

Yeah, you can't deal with that. So you got to hire the right people, you know. You have to— every business has its, you know, some businesses can be flexible, people don't have to be on time, you can adjust work times, you know, based on your business. So, you know, you know, make sure you have a good atmosphere for your employees, like We like to do lunch every other Friday. Makes for a good atmosphere. Everybody sits down, breaks bread together.

Well, let me talk since I'm an employee.

Okay.

Spill the tea. No, you know, Allen is, you know, he's old school, right? So, you know, I mean, like, for me, it's not the hardest thing. You know, me and him have our disagreements. Disagreements and we get through that. All in all, the company culture is for here is, it's good. You know, Allen, he has a certain way of communicating, right? And so like you got to kind of learn how to communicate with Allen, just like anybody for the most part. Anyone has that. Dave, we, you know, Dave is the other guy. He's, He operates out of another office, the other office in Miami. So we don't really interact much with Dave. He's a nice guy from my— the handful of times I've actually had to talk to him, which is nuts, by the way.

I know.

I tell him all the time.

It is what it is.

For 2 years, I mean, I've probably seen him 10 times.

Yeah.

Maybe, I'm bumping that number way up. But besides, you know, like, I mean, you know, Allen's under, like, it's like, I don't wanna say it's high stress, like in the office is always high stress, it's not that way, right? But Allen is, this is a high stress, high energy business, right?

It's not that, we have a problem.

It is that.

There's a problem.

You're making deals, you're trying to pay the bills, man, and you know, you're out here hustling. So you're high energy. Allen's a high energy person. He has a lot to say, you know, he, he, he, and he's knowledgeable. So he wants to get his point across. So, you know, talking to Allen isn't always the easiest, but, you know, as far as like the company itself, you know, I'm blessed. I'm a dad, you know what I mean? So I still got kids at home. Um, so, you know, he's very understanding of that. Um, you know, like as far as all the other stuff goes, you know, I love working here.

Oh, thank you.

I do. I would have quit a long time ago. I told you that if I didn't like working here. Yes. The transition going from, you know, owning your own business, doing that full time for 10 years and then taking that hat off and then coming to work for Nationwide Payment Systems was a huge transition for me.

Oh, I know it was. And, you know, also, you know, It's a, you know, it's a whole different industry to learn. Every time we hire somebody, you know, they're doing a website, they're doing social media, they're doing graphic design, they're making phone calls, whatever it is. They have to like, they have to slowly learn the bit, you know, learn the business.

Oh yeah, I mean, I had— I mean, from operating the operational side of it, I understood what a merchant account was. But I had no understanding. I didn't, I didn't really— inner workings, uh, you know, there were so many things that were introduced to me that, you know, that I wish I knew about. Mainly that there's companies like Allen, but specifically Nationwide Payment Systems. Sorry, um, yeah, I had a fruit fly or something. Um, they pay out commissions. So like, if I'm— for like, I said this on a podcast a bunch of times, like all of the websites and the e-commerce sites and all the small businesses that I've helped for the past decade, I missed a whole, uh, revenue stream by not, you know, getting them hooked up on a merchant account because every business has to get paid. And so just learning that and learning other things, you know, Allen, he's not— he's an all right teacher. I wouldn't like give him like a Teacher of the Year award or anything, but you know what I'm saying? Like, he, he's just an encyclopedia of, of merchant services. So like, that's the cool part. Like, he can answer a question on a, you know, he could be on the phone and I'm like talking to someone else over there and like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, if you know Allen Kopelman, that's, that's what— no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I always say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But, um, all in all, man, it's, uh, you know, I'm blessed and, uh, very grateful to have the opportunity to, to come to work and you know, do things like this. Like, how many places that you, you know, how many employers are, one, even willing to get on a camera? And two, like, you know, this is like a part, it's a part of my job now. So like, I've grown to like it. I didn't want to do it. And you know, it's opened me up. So, you know, I'm super grateful for Allen. And Nationwide Payment Systems.

I appreciate that. No, it's important that, you know, you incorporate your employees into planning. I don't tell them, like, I don't tell Justin I know what to do. I don't, I don't know how to build a website. I understand what, how it kind of works, you know, we discuss that, you know, but I depend on him for his expertise. I depend on the people that do the social media for their expertise. You can't do everything yourself. We did another video, we talked about delegating. You know, it's important, you know. I remember one time I was, when I was a chef, I had a job where I went, I had to go around to several, you know, I was in charge of one hotel, but I had to go to two other hotels in Dallas and I was spending a day at each of those hotels every week, right? And my mentor, who was my mentor chef.

Nice.

To the hotel. I got him a free hotel room for the weekend and everything. And then he sat down in the restaurant to eat and he goes, "Oh, you're not going to go back there and cook my food?" And I said, "No, I'm going to sit here." He goes, "That takes real guts." And I said, "I'll tell you what." I said, "I learned something a long time ago. I'm not going to give myself a heart attack, right?" Right. You got to delegate to your employees. You got to trust them. You got to teach them what to do.

I'm laughing because I Like, I had this con— my 21-year-old moved back home with us.

Yeah.

And I literally like basically had that same conversation with her. Like, listen, I can't be all worried about your life choices anymore. I can't be— I got— you're—

you're—

you got to— I can't— you got to do this on your own.

Got to do hashtag adulting.

Yeah, like you got to do that on your own. So like, I can't keep stressing myself out and worrying and like me trying to do everything for you, right? Like, me get a job for you is a perfect example, right?

Right.

Like, I'm all worried about that, like, calling everybody I know, getting their interviews, doing all this. And I'm really sitting there thinking, like, what are you doing, bro? Like, this is not helping her. No, I get it, you know what I'm saying? But sorry for the dad rant, but, but I'm saying, like, hashtag adulting, hashtag adulting. But like, yo, like, it just You know, that's, that's a way to relating what you're saying, like inside of a business, like you have to delegate things, you know what I'm saying? You have to learn that you're not the expert. You hired these people to be the expert at what they do. And as a business owner, you have to rely on them. You have to communicate with them. And that's, you know, Allen's not the best at that, but he's working on it.

I try my best with communicating, you know, sometimes, you know, you have to You know, I like to have the atmosphere where we have a— this— we have an open discussion, you know, and I want to get feedback. I don't want to just sit there and say, Justin, make it like this, do this, do that.

That happens sometimes, but that's like— but that's— it's your business, man. So like, you want to see how it's ran, you want to see how it's done, you— you know, we have to compromise, right?

You have to—

I'm just saying, we all have to compromise.

I'm looking for the discussion because you're going to teach me about— listen, nobody, nothing— like we talked in the beginning of this, we went over— what did we go over? We went over marketing, technology for your business, financial budgeting and keeping good books, talked about regulatory, we talked about company culture, you know, all these things. A lot goes into when you're running a business, you know, Small Business Week, a lot goes into running the business.

And that's a way you wrap up a podcast, right?

A lot goes into running business. Good luck to all the small business owners out there, small and medium-sized business. You have a business and you need some help, you want to, you know, want to, want to get a point of sale system because you're trying to grow your business. You know, you want to have employees in your business instead of you being there all the time. That's why you put in a point of sale system so you can track all your inventory, make sure it's not all walking out the door. There you go, right? So there's lots of things we can help you with if you want that, if you want the help. Yeah.

And listen to B2B Vault, the podcast, because Allen and myself are always giving out tips and gems and jewels and all types of treasures for you to keep in your toolbox and your treasure chest. But please follow B2B Vault on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok. YouTube, LinkedIn. On YouTube, please subscribe to the channel, turn on post notifications so that you always get the, uh, the, the, the notification of when we're about to post the video. Um, check out the shorts.

Um, that's where you can get a little taste of the what we're talking about on the podcast, clips of the pod.

Yep. So yeah, man, B2B Vault, peace out. Peace.

That was probably a long podcast.

Uh, it was about almost an hour.

That was a good podcast.

That was one of the better ones we've done in a while.